Sunday, June 4, 2006

A while ago, I href=http://www.mkgray.com:8000/blog/Games/General/BoardGameGeek-Correlations.html>wrote aboutgame correlations on BGG. I recently thought it would beinteresting to apply a hierarchical clustering algorithm to thosecorrelations. So I did. What this yields is abig nested tree of games, not based on shared attributes such as"Knizia games" or "auction games", but based on correlations among people's preferences.

It produces a lot of interesting results, many very natural, a fewsurprising. For example, the GIPF series ends up clustered along withGo, Crokinole, Ingenious, Abalone, and Quarto. Of course, it alsoends up near Tongiaki and Oasis, which is a little surprising.

Pretty much all of the mass-market games get clustered together, withBaloon Cup and Street Soccer being slightly surprising "visitors" tothat cluster. Then, there's the "traditional games" cluster whichends up with a handful of Kosmos 2-players in the same parent cluster.Those form a super-cluster with the mass-market games, with Tichu andSleuth thrown in.

Another surprising grouping was that the "chaotic game" cluster(Democrazy, Fluxx, Castle, etc) ended up as a sub-cluster of a largercluster dominated by heavy and involved games and a bunch of SteveJackson games. I would not hae expected Civilization and "Devil BunnyNeeds a Ham" to end up so close.

I was slightly surprised that there was no single "party games"cluster. Some, like Apples to Apples, ended up in an abstract gamessuper-cluster. Others, like Pictionary and Balderdash ended up in amini party-games cluster along with a bunch of slightly older Eurogames. Still others like Catchphrase end up in the residual outercluster of games that aren't especially strongly linked at all.

Perhaps the greatest trend is the extent to which games that came outaround the same time end up clustered. Perhaps Java, Torres and Ta Yuhave some other commonality other than all coming out 1999-2000, butthat seems an obvious shared attribute.

Are there any clusters that havve an obvious theme/category for 100%of the games in them other than the ones I've already labeled?

Personal

Professional

I am a Engineering Director at Google. My team and I work on Search.

Previously, I was the CTO at an 802.11 location and security company, Newbury Networks in Boston. In June, 1999 I received my Masters degree from the MIT Media Lab. I graduated from MIT (undergraduate) in June, 1997, in physics. Prior to that I was CTO of net.Genesis from 1994 to 1996.